Monday, January 24, 2011

Is it wrong to accept a blogger award, but not the requirements of the award? And if it is wrong, what is the punishment for doing so? Will I be banned from receipt of future awards? Will I have to forfeit some followers? Will I receive glaring looks from other bloggers? When I meet a fellow blogger on the street, will they cross to the other side? Or will my fingers fall off so I can no longer blog?

Just weighing my options here because while I'd like to profusely thank Misha for the lovely award (as seen above) and I will definitely provide a link to her blog, the requirements of sending it on to 10 of my new favorite blogs and revealing 7 interesting facts about myself are, sadly, things that will have to be added to my to do list--right in between "Revising the great American novel" and cleaning the cupboard under my bathroom sink. Just saying...I was never very good at any of those chain letter thingys. I always broke the chain and I probably will now with the Stylish Blogger Award chain. Sorry.

Please visit Misha's blog here and tell her how awesome she is!!! Oh, and become her follower so she'll know she didn't give me this award in vain.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Today you were the Wednesday of Awesomeness. And this because there was not a single item scheduled to mar your perfect perfectness.

Sure I did some laundry (finished all of it actually) and completed a few minor trivialities by phone and internet (and some important things, too) and even made some semblance of dinner, but beyond that I stayed in my sweats and a ponytail and wrote and edited upon my wee novel.

I tweaked a bunch of things, deleted others, and got pleasantly surprised by things I had forgotten from my last round of edits.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Most people laugh when they hear of Enoch's dream of returning to Jerusalem to find the infant Messiah. Even Enoch's future father-in-law mocks him when he asks for a postponement of his long-awaited wedding to his beloved Rebekah.

A few take Enoch seriously - the shipbuilder Omnihah, Enoch's teacher David, and the prophet Nephi.

Five years before, a Lamanite named Samuel had stood on the wall of Zarahemla and prophesied that "five years more cometh" and the Christ would be born in Jerusalem.

Time is running out! Enoch knows he must set sail across the great waters in search of his dream- to see the face of the Messiah.

The Star Prophecy is a surprising story of courage and love, faith and fortitude.

Sail with Enoch and his friends across the sea through hardship and adventure in search of the Christ child.

I like the idea of looking at Christ's birth from different perspectives and seeing the reactions for good and ill of those we read about in the New Testament. But what might the people in the Americas been thinking as the time drew nearer? Surely there were some with such great faith that they wanted to witness the birth of the Christ Child themselves. Enter Joan's fictional story of Enoch. While I am not generally a huge fan of scripture fiction, Joan is a great writer and storyteller. This one will pull you right into Enoch's journey.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

I had a sweet dream last night. It's the second time I can recall having a dream about writing.

Well, I have a dream about writing 24/7...but this was a real asleep dream.

In it a critique group was gathered at my house. I was surprised and confused that they were at my house because it was quite the illustrious group of men and women, all successful writers. One of them was Janette Rallison, or at least the essence of Janette Rallison. You know how dreams are. Things are often skewed, but definitely in my mind in the dream it was supposed to be Janette.

Anyway, everything was going wrong. I kept trying to turn on lights and they wouldn't go on. I had trouble getting my family to leave so we could have our meeting. I was stressing out. Then I went over to where the critique group was seated in the living room. While I had been busy with lights and kids, one of the men had printed off a portion of my story and read it to the group. They began to talk about it and praise it and give me good ideas for it.

Like I said. Sweet.

It must be because I ranted by email yesterday to friend and critique group partner, Tamara, about writing/publishing, which is a topic for another post, but I'll dedicate this one to her. Thanks, Tamara!Note: Click on Tamara's name and it will take you to her blog. Janette's name will take you to her website.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

I've learned something over the past few days as I've worked on my personal goal of spending at least 2 hours a day working on revisions of my rough draft.

This is it: My words are not sacred. (Scared, maybe sometimes, but not sacred.)

It's true.

I thought they were so great when I wrote them...and then edited them to death...and then a little more just for good measure. Now I am back at them after a 2-month sabbatical and I find that they can become even better.

They can be changed.

This is why they should be scared.

After arriving at the end of my story, I know the beginning so much better and it's very exciting to see it coming together, fitting like puzzle pieces from one chapter to the next to the next to the next.

I also blog at these "spots"

CURRENTLY READING:

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt (for book club)

Half the Skyby Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn

The Book of Mormonby various authors

Out of the mouths of writerly people

"Once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing." --Virginia Woolf

"...it's easy after all not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers and very little harm comes to them." --Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot